Our Mission

We're building learning tools that make deep understanding accessible to everyone — while keeping the footprint of that learning as light as the planet can afford.

Why we exist

Education is the highest-leverage way to change the future, yet the way most people learn online hasn't kept up. Content is passive, feedback is slow, and the tools rarely adapt to how a single person actually thinks. Bonsai exists to close that gap: an AI tutor that explains, questions, and works through problems with you, not at you.

What we're working on

Today Bonsai brings four tools into one place — a Learn tutor for new topics, an interactive Notebook for working through problems by hand, an Explain mode where you teach a concept back, and a Discuss mode for argument and debate. Each is designed around active recall and Socratic prompting rather than spoon-fed answers.

How it works

Under the hood, Bonsai pairs a large language model with a Socratic prompting layer that's tuned to withhold direct answers until you've attempted the reasoning yourself. The Notebook reads your handwriting and sketches, so the tutor can nudge the next step instead of revealing the whole solution.

Our commitment

We run lean on compute, prefer efficient models where they're good enough, and design for low-bandwidth devices so learning isn't gated by hardware. Sustainability isn't a tagline for us — it's a constraint we build inside of.

AI models & licenses

Bonsai's AI tutor is powered by Gemma, Google's family of open models, served via Scaleway Generative APIs. Gemma reads your notebook — handwriting, sketches, and photos — directly.

Gemma is provided under and subject to the Gemma Terms of Use found at ai.google.dev/gemma/terms. Your use of Bonsai's AI features must also follow the Gemma Prohibited Use Policy. See our Terms of Service for the full notice.